The Fourth Photograph
by thelasteddis
Summary: As he waits for Chandra to finish working, Sylar finds a photograph of a stranger. He's intrigued, and a little infatuated. Sylar/Mohinder; I listed it as those characters even though Mohinder isn't actually present so my fellow slash fans can find it.


**Author's Notes: I'd like to dedicate this to Sylar, for acting on the sorts of feelings described herein and, thus, doing things to Mohinder that the rest of us can only dream about. Also, I just realized this is my second fic in which four is an important number. How strange. This might have to become a thing, stay tuned. XD**

There were four personal photographs in Chandra Suresh's apartment.

The first was a formal picture of his family. He stood in front of a plain background along with his pregnant wife and Shanti.

The second was the university. Again, it was formal, rigid from the stances of the twenty-some professors in their grey suits to the symmetric building behind them. Chandra himself stood at the side of the group, unique in the amusement behind his grave look.

The third was Shanti. There were innumerable photographs of Shanti in Chandra's files, but they seemed always to be of her power, not of her. This picture merged the two. The camera was close to her face, and the background was blurry darkness. In contrast, Shanti stood out in sharp detail, her face lit in swaths by a wide beam of sunlight that emanated from her palm. She smiled. It was an enchanting smile, full of delicate teeth, and it was easy to see how Chandra had loved her.

Sylar didn't know there was a fourth until he had been visiting the apartment for some time. Encased in a plain black frame, it was stacked unceremoniously in a pile of books, which had been shoved between a bookshelf and a potted plant. The picture, like the first two, featured a straight-backed Chandra, but here he stood beside a dark haired young man, maybe in his early twenties, in a graduation cap and gown. Sylar blinked twice, but his first impression had not deceived him; the graduate was beautiful, more so than anything Sylar had ever seen. Something in his perfect compactness, despite his considerable height, reminded Sylar of a finished watch. His body used space efficiently, with nothing squashed or stretched. Intriguing.

"Who's this?" Sylar held up the photograph so Chandra could see it from across the room. The professor was sitting at his desk plugging numbers (numbers that represented Sylar, numbers that would change everything) into his computer.

At Sylar's question, Chandra looked up. His eyes focused on the picture; his eyebrows dug towards the center of his forehead in a frown. "I thought I had lost that," he said. "Hadn't seen it for months."

Sylar looked back at the picture. God, who had eyes that dark? They were like beetle eyes or something. Or possibly like a deep, dark, night sky. With stars. "Was he a student of yours?"

"That's Mohinder," Chandra said, not lifting his eyes from the computer (apparently, Sylar was supposed to have dropped the issue). "He's my son."

Heavy eyebrows rose. "Mohinder… Like the lizard?" Silence. Sylar looked at the tank holding Chandra's pet. Mohinder—the reptilian one—looked back. "I didn't know you had a son."

"He's a professor, back in India. We worked in the same department for a few months."

"You must be proud," Sylar stated. But Chandra wasn't, that was clear.

"Yes, I suppose so." Chandra exhaled and looked up from the screen at Sylar, the man he still called Gabriel. "Mohinder is under the impression I am ruining my reputation on a fruitless quest." A tight-lipped smile, an invitation for his companion to share the irony as well as a demand for him to stop asking questions.

Sylar returned to perusing the photograph while he decided whether to continue. Chandra's work had been going more slowly than expected. He was apt to be irritable.

(They had the same nose, but the similarities ended there.)

Sylar—when he was Gabriel, at least—rarely asked personal questions. This would be a first, a rare deviation from generally good behavior.

(Where Chandra was broad-shouldered, Mohinder was spindly; Where Chandra's smile was reserved, Mohinder grinned, if a little tensely.)

When they did talk about personal matters, Chandra was fairly open, especially regarding Shanti. Sylar remembered the family portrait.

"He was born after Shanti?"

That stopped Chandra in his tracks. The swiftly typing fingers, so similar to the ticking clocks Sylar was usually accompanied by, suddenly ceased and left a floating quiet behind. The professor looked up, but not at his companion. The stab in the dark had been more effective than intended. Indeed, that it had had an effect at all was a surprise.

"He was supposed to save Shanti—I made sure he would have the antibodies to combat the virus. But he was too late."

Gabriel looked sad. Sylar was amused. They were both silent as Sylar took another look at the photograph. It was almost poetic—poor Mohinder, trying to be special because he hadn't been when it counted, because he wasn't expected to be, anymore. Forever under the shadow of a mistake he probably did not know he had made.

The last revelation had broken some barrier in Chandra's mind, and after a pause he started talking without Sylar's interference. "He was very enthusiastic about my theories for the longest time; always wanting to talk about them, looking for historical evidence of powers, that sort of thing. Then I said I was coming here, and he told me I would destroy my reputation. Told me I was leaving behind everything. Of course I was, that was the point. Nothing but my research here." As an afterthought, Chandra looked directly at Sylar and smiled. "And you, of course, Gabriel. My patient zero and my dear friend."

"But he was interested in your theories?" Not completely estranged, then.

"As long as they stayed theories," Chandra said with a humorless smile. "He has nowhere near the strength one needs for true academic discovery. He is controlled by fear, held in one place by the way that things always have been. Easily manipulated. He is happiest and safest where he is, as I am happiest, if perhaps not safest, where I am."

Sylar was distracted for a moment by the image of the naive academic Chandra described held in place by fear. Fear or telekinesis. In Chandra's eyes, the pause was sympathetic, and he forgot the momentary attack of curiosity that had seized his dear friend Gabriel when he returned to his work.

His eyes returning to the eyes of the man in the photo (easily manipulated, his mind whispered), Sylar asked himself what Chandra could be complaining about.

Mohinder sounded wonderful.


End file.
